Skyrim or Fallout 4 when I want to chill as an adventurous muderer

Earth Defense Force when I want to blow shit up

Dinkum is a really good Stardew Valley/Animal Crossing mix. If you like either, you'll likely end up like me, playing "just a bit" and realizing over 4 hours flew by.

Dead Cells. I can just... Zone out and go. It's really cathartic, and if I do particularly bad during a run, I just... Die and start over. You don't lose anything you've gained, (unless you pick something up in a biome and don't make it to the exit), and each run is practically a new game that requires nothing to learn it. It's my Zen game.

Dwarf Fortress.

Theme Hospital.

The Sims.

Games that I can mostly play hands off.

Timberborn is always nice,

so is Minecraft.

Subnautica is also very relaxing after you know your way around it.

But Red Dead Redemption 2 is the most "chill" game for me. You can simply go out to hunt, enjoy the nature, etc.

Any of the building/management games like Factorio or Dyson Sphere Program or RimWorld. You can definitely make those games extremely challenging (speed runs, achievements, ultra hard modes/challenges). But for me they're cozy games where I can chip away at a small project or part of a larger project, like, I don't know, slowly building a scale model or something.

Nethack or DROD

Just starting to get into genshin impact, though, and it seems pretty cool.

Mars First Logistics & Animal Crossing

Path of exile for a few weeks every league

But I'm enjoying rogue lites / vampire survivors like games. There's a billion of them so you can just chill with one of them. I usually find a new one every other day too, some demo or whatever

Risk of rain 2 is also not something I would call a chill game. But it's definitely something you can just fire up and play for an hour

Sky Children of the Light (solo player)

Weirdly, Yakuza. Not even to thrash thugs, just to have a virtual night out with some karaoke, pool, darts... sexy bug-lady wrestling... I love most of the mini games in the series.

Apart from trackmania which was already named it's certainly slay the spire. I often do both TTD and the daily in sts. If I didn't always end up trying to go for sub 35min points it'd actually be relaxing probably.

Im going to hijack op post.

Im looking for game to chill just like OP described, but im looking for something with online multiplayer. Ideally something like a builder like minecraft or no man sky, where I can just connect and find randomly people and help them build shit. I dont want to have to search for specific servers to interact with people, something that would randomly put me in worlds with other people.

Creeper world 4. Especially the community made play as creep levels.

Harvest Moon /Story of Season games.

Stardew Valley.

Diner Dash series of games.

Descenders (oddly satisfying mountain biking game)

Life is Strange was a good one to chill and enjoy the unfolding of events (any of them are good. The 1st and Colors were my favorites)

Grand Turismo I've been on. Never really been a racing fan but for a few races I'm actually relaxed and enjoying myself.

These days it's Baldurs Gate 3 but before that, it's Grimdawn for ARPG itch or Stardew valley if I just want to turn a game on and afk alot. (Sometimes that's Grimdawn too)

Basically Loopy in Simon Tatham's Puzzles, available on Linux, Windows, and Android (F-Droid), when I don't want to be stressed.

Otherwise I just play some retro/old school games like Final Fantasy (started IV a few days ago), (Free)Doom, AssaultCube or Cave Story when on my laptop.

Earth Defense Force or Creeper World 3